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Typically, negotiating a deal with a software supplier can be broken down into three stages: preparation, negotiating the contract and evaluating whether it was indeed a good deal. It is the last of these stages that tends to be the most difficult.

Outsourcing services is a common aspect of most business strategies, whether it is to save costs, streamline, or take advantage of external skills and resource that don’t exist in the organisation, many businesses now see it as a mainstream standard business practise.

There is still a decision to be made, however, on whether to opt for an outsource provider based in the UK (near shore) or whether to go further afield. There is often a perception that outsourcing automatically means offshoring, despite many outsourced services being provided in the originating country.

Benchmarking reduces the price of long term ongoing outsourcing deals and ensures that contracts remain cost-effective and efficient in the fast paced technological world in which we live.

Data Centre investment and usage is set to continue to grow in the UK despite the slow growth faced by other parts of the economy according to recent research.

The UK is already one of the largest markets for Data Centres and related Data Centre Services such as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and Cloud Computing Solutions.

Based on power consumption, there are currently an approximate 2 million equipment racks active in the UK but that number looks set to rise further according to research.

Any major outsourcing agreement is an upheaval and anyone entering into it who thinks otherwise is being naive! There is a bedding down period, then BAU (Business As Usual) and then the improvement opportunities arise. Will the incumbent come to you offering better SLAs and cost reductions? Obviously not, as doing so would make their life harder and erode their margins. However, both are achievable if the correct partner is selected in the correct manner and the contracts are drawn up in a suitable way. Here at exceeding we assist organisations achieve this.

1. Is management fully committed to moving ahead provided you can provide a compelling business case?
If not, how can they be or is the project a non-starter?

2. Is your organisation truly ready to accommodate a third party service provider?
If your organisation is not ready, can you leverage the right change management techniques to enable this.

There have been a few recent analyses showing that cloud computing has significant efficiency and cost advantages. Estimates vary, however lets all agree that cloud computing is here and growing! So what’s the ‘cloud’ well sorry to tell you folks but it’s centralised computer akin to the good old mainframe!  So why is the cloud so popular? I can think of a few reasons why cloud AKA centralised computing is significantly more energy efficient than using in-house datacenters.

What is Business Transformation? It is a change in management strategy which aims to align your businesses staff, processes and technology initiatives as a company more closely with its business goals and aspirations. Typically internal staff and business leaders are often worse placed to analyse these needs let alone implement them. Here at eXceeding we specialise in helping organisations review and then, where appropriate, restructure.

eXceeding, the IT Services solution sourcing specialists, recently asked a Linkedin Group ‘Cloud Computing, SaaS & Virtualization’ which contains over a 100,000 members of industry experts “What is the largest challenge businesses face selecting a Cloud solution?”

The responses confirmed that this is still a very hot topic for many businesses. The conversations highlighted many of the challenges organisations face selecting Cloud, IaaS, SaaS and PaaS. Below is a summary and selection of the types of responses posted.

Businesses are renegotiating outsourcing agreements before expiration more often than ever before. The nature of many agreements entered into previously has tended to be rather rigid. Client and provider demands are constantly evolving as their businesses demands increase and as such so are IT services and technologies.